Cupcake Shop Crumbs Shuttering All Its Stores

rumbs says it is shuttering all its stores, a week after the struggling cupcake shop operator was delisted from the Nasdaq.

The New York City-based company said all employees were notified of the closures Monday. A representative for Crumbs could not immediately say how many workers were affected or how many stores it had remaining on its last day.

"Regrettably Crumbs has been forced to cease operations and is immediately attending to the dislocation of its employees while it evaluates its limited remaining options," the company said in an emailed statement. That will include filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

A press release from its website in March listed 65 locations in 12 states and Washington, D.C. The website had not been updated with notification of the closures late Monday.

Crumbs was founded in 2003 and went public in 2011, selling giant cupcakes in flavors including Cookie Dough and Girl Scouts Thin Mints. More recently, however, it had been suffering from a steep decline in sales. For the three months ending March 31, Crumbs Bake Shop Inc. reported a loss of $3.8 million, steeper than the loss of $2 million from the same period a year ago.

The company had warned in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this past May that it "may be forced to curtail or cease its activities" if its operations didn't generate enough cash flow.

As of the end of last year, Crumbs listed about 165 full-time employees and about 655 part-time hourly employees working in its stores.

Source:

abcnews.go.com

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Boeing freezes pensions for 68,000 employees

Boeing says the move will curb the "unsustainable growth" of its long-term pension liability

US aerospace company Boeing has frozen defined-benefit pensions for 68,000 employees, including management and executives.

From January 2016, the funds paid out by new Boeing pensions will be market-dependent.

The switch affects non-unionised employees and follows a pension deal struck with unions in January.

Boeing said the move would curb the "unsustainable growth" of its long-term pension liability.

Pensions for most Boeing employees will move from defined benefits, such as a fixed final-salary scheme, to a defined contribution scheme from 1 January 2016.

People on the original scheme will receive benefits for contributions to the end of 2015, while benefits accrued from the beginning of 2016 will be under the new scheme.

The pension switch, which affects non-unionised employees, follows a deal that was narrowly accepted by unionised Boeing workers in Seattle in January.

Under the deal, workers voted to accept the change to their pensions as part of an agreement that Boeing would assemble 777X jets in Washington state.

Large US companies that have changed pension schemes to minimise costs include General Motors, which announced plans to reduce its pension burden by $26bn (£17bn) in June 2012.

News Source: www.bbc.com

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